Fable Anniversary Interview with Producer Craig Oman

We had a ton of great questions submitted by you guys earlier this year, more so than we could possibly jam into a single interview, as it happens. Still, we were able to sift through and catalogue our favourite assortment of queries and quandaries and forward onto the Lionhead team, and to further pick their collective brains regarding the upcoming release of Fable Anniversary.

Unfortunately, not all of our questions were able to be addressed, but we're still incredibly thankful to Lionhead for taking the time to answer our questions, with a special thank you to the brilliant Christopher Hohbein for approaching the community for the interview.

Read on for Fable Anniversary's producer Craig Oman's answers to the fans' questions.

​

Necromancer: How much new content will be included in Fable Anniversary, and what types of things are going to be added? Characters? Story line quests? Side Quests? Weaponry? Armor? Other items? Locations? Etc.

CO: Fable Anniversary is a massive game and our top goal is to update every inch of the original Fable, including The Lost Chapters. I won’t say we will never add content (especially some new clothing or weapons) but first and foremost, we want to make sure that core game looks and plays fantastic.

Will there be any surprising achievements that players might not expect to be in the game? If so, could you hint at what those achievements might involve?

CO: Ted Timmins has done a great job of designing the achievements to really appeal to fans of the original game. I’m not going to spoil his surprises but needless to say that as a tester on the original game, he has managed to highlight some features that some fans probably didn’t even know existed.

Hermes: Chesty was an extraordinarily popular character in Fable II & III could we possibly see the origins of this mad trunk of wood in the near future of any possible DLC for Fable: Anniversary?

CO: Haha, no I’m afraid not … *writes down good idea to later pass off as his own*

Hermes: There was a lot of hidden content not accessible to console owners but available to PC modders: Whisper's bombs and Dragoncliff for example, could we by any chance have access to these secret buried treasures?

[this question was not answered]

DarkONI: How do you feel about life at Lionhead now that Molly has left for almost a whole year?

[this question was not answered]

Dark Drakan: If you could pick any feature from another game series to bring into the Fable universe what would it be?

CO: The ability to fly dragons from Panzer Dragoon!

Hermes: You're now using a new save system based on checkpoints I believe, what made you scrap the old hero & world save to revert to this, was it simply to avoid users cheating? Or was it a technical problem?

CO: Basically the old save system was confusing, we are just trying to simplify this experience for everyone and make it easier to pick up where you left off.

Hermes: Will the Kinect be utilised in Fable: Anniversary or any other future titles as an optional tool to give us more ways for playability?

We are not utilising Kinect for Fable Anniversary but we do have a really cool smartglass app to go along with it.

Steve: Why isn't a PC version release a dead cert?

CO: This project started because our fans demanded us to remake the original game as you can see in our announcement trailer which contains actual tweets we received. We made the decision to focus on the Xbox 360 first but if enough fans want a PC version then we will try to make it happen, so keep tweeting @LionheadStudios and ask (nicely) for a PC version .

Steve: If DLC is being considered, then are we talking about something substantial, ie: additional areas, missions or characters?

[this question was not answered]

ScareCrowReturn: Will I finally get the Singing Sword?

[this question was not answered]

Ss X Britain: The biggest question of all.... Why chickens?

CO: Why not?

TLC-FTW: What is your thoughts on the fans criticisms of the last 2 games in comparison to the first, how are you planning to go about the next instalment?

HobbeBrain: Where can I find the Sandgoose?

[this question was not answered]

cheezMcNasty: What has been the key ingredient to Fable's past success and how do you plan to preserve and improve upon it in future instalments?

[this question was not answered]

ByronT: If Fable Anniversary doesn't materialise for the PC after all, what would it entail to release modding tools for the original Fable: TLC or even Fable 3?

CO: We actively listen to all our fans and try to take on board their comments. We are working hard to grow our community and involve them more in the decisions we make!

Thanks again to Lionhead for being such terrific sports. Don't forget to follow Fable Anniversary's development by following @LionheadStudios on Twitter.

Comments

what would it entail to release modding tools for the original Fable: TLC or even Fable 3?

Click to expand...

This isn't going to happen. The F2/3 engine is using too many licensed properties. And F1/TLC is mostly hard coded crap.

The main issue you'll see is that they exposed stuff to lua that they shouldn't have. Such as GFWL checks, purchasing, and achievement functions for the guild room.

A lot of the stuff they added into LUA for F2/3 is not owned by them. Such as KoreVM and Pluto. Plus a bunch of other Havok based licenses. The rest of the game I beleive was created using an editor similar to what Baystone created with Chocolate box for Fable TLC.

What I want to know is which engine Fable Anniversary is using. Fable1/TLC or Fable2/3. There's a very big difference in the way assets and scripts are handled.

This isn't going to happen. The F2/3 engine is using too many licensed properties. And F1/TLC is mostly hard coded crap.

The main issue you'll see is that they exposed stuff to lua that they shouldn't have. Such as GFWL checks, purchasing, and achievement functions for the guild room.

A lot of the stuff they added into LUA for F2/3 is not owned by them. Such as KoreVM and Pluto. Plus a bunch of other Havok based licenses. The rest of the game I beleive was created using an editor similar to what Baystone created with Chocolate box for Fable TLC.

What I want to know is which engine Fable Anniversary is using. Fable1/TLC or Fable2/3. There's a very big difference in the way assets and scripts are handled.

Click to expand...

They are using Unreal technology for the updated lighting, I don't know if that means they are using the unreal engine though.

Fascinating! And to be honest, completely unsurprised by the questions they neglected to answer... and by the ones they dodged. Great of them to do this, though! And great of you guys to organize this, Steve!